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Estimated time of infection vs. confirmed infections

Following the ideas from Tomas Pueyo's Medium post "Coronavirus: Why You Must Act Now" [1], we assume the average time from infection to death at 23 days [2]. The data is pulled from the COVID-19 Data Repository by Johns Hopkins CSSE [3] every hour. Countries with a minimnum of 1000 confirmed cases and 40 confirmed deaths are included in this analysis.

The time from infection to death is equal to the incubation period plus the time from symptoms to death. This is used to estimate the time of the infections that lead to the observed deaths. We take the last fatality rate per country (total_cases/total_deaths) to estimate the number of infections that are responsible for the observed deaths.

In the figures below, you can observe successive waves of infections (dashed), detections (black) and deaths (red) for each country. The upper panel shows the absolute number of events. The dashed lines show the estimated number of infections. The lower panel shows the normalized number of events. Here the temporal delay between the waves and the relative change between each other can be observed.

[1] https://medium.com/@tomaspueyo/coronavirus-act-today-or-people-will-die-f4d3d9cd99ca

[2] https://github.com/midas-network/COVID-19/tree/master/parameter_estimates/2019_novel_coronavirus

[3] https://github.com/CSSEGISandData/COVID-19/tree/master/csse_covid_19_data/csse_covid_19_time_series

US
Brazil
Mexico
India
United Kingdom
Italy
Russia
France
Germany
Spain
Colombia
Iran
Poland
Argentina
Peru
South Africa
Ukraine
Indonesia
Turkey
Czechia
Romania
Hungary
Chile
Belgium
Canada
Ecuador
Pakistan
Netherlands
Philippines
Portugal
Bulgaria
Iraq
Sweden
Egypt
Bolivia
Slovakia
Bangladesh
Tunisia
Switzerland
Greece
Japan
Austria
Morocco
Jordan
Bosnia and Herzegovina
Guatemala
Lebanon
Croatia
Saudi Arabia
Paraguay
Serbia
Israel
Panama
Moldova
Honduras
Ireland
North Macedonia
China
Azerbaijan
Slovenia
Georgia
Armenia
Lithuania
Ethiopia
Dominican Republic
Kazakhstan
Nepal
Algeria
West Bank and Gaza
Costa Rica
Burma
Libya
Kenya
Uruguay
Afghanistan
Belarus
Denmark
Albania
Sudan
Venezuela
Latvia
Kosovo
El Salvador
Nigeria
Oman
South Korea
Kyrgyzstan
Syria
United Arab Emirates
Kuwait
Zimbabwe
Malaysia
Montenegro
Zambia
Estonia
Malawi
Senegal
Cameroon
Finland
Australia
Mozambique
Luxembourg
Ghana
Jamaica
Congo (Kinshasa)
Norway
Somalia
Botswana
Sri Lanka
Eswatini
Madagascar
Cuba
Uzbekistan
Bahrain
Namibia
Angola
Mali
Qatar
Mauritania
Malta
Uganda
Rwanda
Belize
Lesotho
Cyprus
Guyana
Cote d'Ivoire
Haiti
Thailand
Cabo Verde
Hong Kong
Suriname
Bahamas
Trinidad and Tobago
Burkina Faso
Djibouti
Guinea
Congo (Brazzaville)
Gabon
Andorra
Togo
Papua New Guinea
South Sudan
Mongolia

Ahead of the curve

Some countries start testing the population earlier in the outbreak than others. The time delay between the wave of deaths and the wave of confirmed cases is indicative for how early a country is detecting new cases ahead of the increase of deaths. Earlier detection means a better chances for successful isolation of an infected person and treatment of the desease.

We measure the distance of the maximum of cumulative deaths and new deaths to the number of infections to estimate the progression of the infection across countries.

If, in the early phase of the infection wave, the number of deaths rises faster than the number of confirmed cases, the distance drops, indicating that

A comparison of countries with respect to their mean time for reponse is presented below.

To determine the above values, we plot the number of confirmed cases (solid black lines) and the number of deaths (dashed black lines). From this, we measure the distance of the day of maximum deaths (dashed red lines) to the day of confirmed cases at this y-value.

The distance is indicative for how fast the humber of confirmed cases increases comapred to the increase of the number of deaths.

US
Brazil
Mexico
India
United Kingdom
Italy
Russia
France
Germany
Spain
Colombia
Iran
Poland
Argentina
Peru
South Africa
Ukraine
Indonesia
Turkey
Czechia
Romania
Hungary
Chile
Belgium
Canada
Ecuador
Pakistan
Netherlands
Philippines
Portugal
Bulgaria
Iraq
Sweden
Egypt
Bolivia
Slovakia
Bangladesh
Tunisia
Switzerland
Greece
Japan
Austria
Morocco
Jordan
Bosnia and Herzegovina
Guatemala
Lebanon
Croatia
Saudi Arabia
Paraguay
Serbia
Israel
Panama
Moldova
Honduras
Ireland
North Macedonia
China
Azerbaijan
Slovenia
Georgia
Armenia
Lithuania
Ethiopia
Dominican Republic
Kazakhstan
Nepal
Algeria
West Bank and Gaza
Costa Rica
Burma
Libya
Kenya
Uruguay
Afghanistan
Belarus
Denmark
Albania
Sudan
Venezuela
Latvia
Kosovo
El Salvador
Nigeria
Oman
South Korea
Kyrgyzstan
Syria
United Arab Emirates
Kuwait
Zimbabwe
Malaysia
Montenegro
Zambia
Estonia
Malawi
Senegal
Cameroon
Finland
Australia
Mozambique
Luxembourg
Ghana
Jamaica
Congo (Kinshasa)
Norway
Somalia
Botswana
Sri Lanka
Eswatini
Madagascar
Cuba
Uzbekistan
Bahrain
Namibia
Angola
Mali
Qatar
Mauritania
Malta
Uganda
Rwanda
Belize
Lesotho
Cyprus
Guyana
Cote d'Ivoire
Haiti
Thailand
Cabo Verde
Hong Kong
Suriname
Bahamas
Trinidad and Tobago
Burkina Faso
Djibouti
Guinea
Congo (Brazzaville)
Gabon
Andorra
Togo
Papua New Guinea
South Sudan
Mongolia